IoT: The mystery made easy

Internet of Things is a term that
is used by most IT Professionals, Engineers, Tech Geeks, and a larger sector of
the technological world. But to the common man, it is still a mystery undiscovered.
Internet of things could seem to be magical to most people who are ignorant to
this evolution created by mankind for the service of mankind.

Internet of Things is not a new
concept. It evolved with human’s effort to make doing things easy. Internet of
Things had its roots into the late 1980’s when some students of the Carnegie
Mellon University modified a Coke vending Machine to connect to the Internet to
know if the machine was empty or not whenever they intended to visit the
machine.

From then, the Internet of Things has never looked back and has progressed since then. Today, Internet of Things could be defined as an ecosystem of physical objects connected that are easily accessible through the internet. The term “Things” refer to any actuator or sensor that is connected to the system to measure, read, or detect any change (minute/ major) in the existing environmental changes.

Most of the Internet of Things
devices don’t need manual operation and could work automatically. These devices
have an assigned IP and most of them could also collect and transfer data over
a network without manual interference or assistance. The Internet of Things was
earlier known as the embedded systems and this term was coined only after Kevin
Ashton of Procter & Gamble used it for the marketing of the new RFID
technology which he considered as an essential component for the Internet of
Things back then.

Nowadays, Internet of Things has
not remained constrained to using RFID’s but has expanded to using small
sensors for measuring and sensing the environmental parameters and even the
slightest changes that are observed by those sensors are read. These sensors
allow us to have a knowledge of any kind of even the slightest change in the
environment. Now, an environment is a real-life scenario and the sensors can be
placed anywhere to measure any parameter as required.

Got confused??? Let us solve this
mystery by a simple example.

Consider a heart patient who is at
home under some specific medications. Without Internet of Things, the patient
would need an all-time caretaker/nurse/doctor to attend him/her. Further, if
any changes, good or bad, happen in his condition, then it would take a lot of
time to schedule an ambulance, get an appointment in the hospital and this
might lead to the patient landing up in a very critical state of health or even
death.

But the scenario would change
completely if Internet of Things could be used in this scenario. The patient
could be provided with a heart monitoring system comprising of a variety of
sensors mixed up together for the detection of every small changes occurring in
the patient’s body. In case of some emergency, this system could automatically
call an ambulance, schedule an appointment at the nearest hospital, send the
location of the hospital to the ambulance so that it can reach there as fast as
possible and then send out the patient’s medical history to the hospital. So,
by the time the patient reaches the hospital, everything is ready up there so
that he could be taken directly for treatment.

Internet of Things also plays a crucial role in data collection. This data could be anything- medical history of patients with similar diseases, some research that is being done on some technology, some entry/exit timings and a large variety of other data. This huge amount can either be stored physically or in cloud and can be further utilized to gain an insight of various traits of humans, and others. This data could be analysed, and it could prevent some major natural disaster or at least warn about it beforehand. All this is possible using the Internet of Things.

Scared after knowing all the
facts??

Need not be. Internet of Things is not as scary or dangerous as it seems to be. Most of the IoT devices are used by us in a daily basis. Whether it includes a pedometer in our phones or a face ID lock, all this is IoT. A remote-controlled home Automation system is also IoT. Smart fridges, smart washing Machines are all the products of IoT. Even you can start with IoT. All you need is a micro controller board, some sensors, and a little knowledge of programming. That’s it.

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About The Author

On best days a Blogger and a passionate Software Engineer, with skills on various aspects whether be it Web Development, Internet of Things, Search Engine Optimization and also an Ethical Hacker. Has a good grip on the Latest tech with Networking and Cloud Security. Adores the profession and always into it.

Hi, Thanks for Introducing IOT. It’s very interesting to learn about the new technologies. Please post some Images and applications of IOT for better understanding. I’ll surely wait for your next Post .